University of Virginia Library

Your special committee on the Paunch issue of The Spectator submits
its report herewith. You asked us to determine whether or not this issue
of The Spectator discredited the name of the University of Virginia, and
if so, whether to a degree sufficient to warrant your bringing the matter
before the Student Council.

You have asked for a relative judgment, and we express our judgment
in relative terms. Our unanimous opinion is that the Paunch issue does
discredit the name of the University of Virginia. The degree of the
offense, however, we think should be measured by comparison with the
much more serious discredit brought upon the University by contemporaneous
issues of The Cavalier Daily.

Measured in this or any other way, however, the objectionable
character of Paunch does not seem to us primarily a problem for punitive
action. The irresponsibility of Paunch and The Cavalier Daily alike seem
to us natural products of the University's present policy of permitting
student sovereignty, one can hardly punish students for doing something
for which they have never realized they might be held responsible. As to
the past, therefore, we see little to be gained by taking the problem to
the Student Council.

As to the future, which is the important aspect of the problem, here,
too, we see little to be gained by taking the problem to the Student
Council. We believe that the important question for the future raised by
the Paunch magazine is this. Are students at the University of Virginia
to continue to enjoy license or are they hereafter to be held responsible
to University authority? We believe that the necessarily normative
function of any educational institution makes the latter policy
preferable here, and moreover we believe that the majority of the people
of the Commonwealth favor the latter policy. In any case, since this is
a question which the student body cannot ultimately decide, we conclude
that there is little reason to take the Paunch problem to the Student
Council.

Since you specifically requested that the committee make no positive
recommendation for the disposition of this case, we assume that this
report completes our work. We ask that you accept the report and
discharge the committee.

I send you this note to confirm the views expressed to you in our
talk a few days ago about the Spectator. Since Mr. Carlson, the Editor,
is not eligible to continue the direction of the magazine, because of
academic probation, you will be required to appoint a new editor and
approve the staff selected by him. In doing this I wish you to bear in
mind that though you act as the Board chosen by the Jefferson Society
which owns Spectator, you act also as representatives of the University.
In fact as in the public understanding, a magazine published by a student
group at the University, using University buildings and under the control
of a society of the University with long and distinguished history, has
an important sanction from the University. The public may with reason
judge the University accordingly. The University's reputation is dear to
all of us who serve it and love it. It is not the property of one small
group to be dealt with in the uncontrolled judgment of that group,
however honest that judgment may be.

I do not share the warm approval of the recent "Paunch" issue
expressed by the Student Council. There runs through it, especially in
the jokes, coarseness and vulgarity which are utterly out of keeping
with the innate good taste which has distinguished the University of
Virginia in the past and which we hope will mark it in the future.
Moreover, one article - "The Decline and Fall of American Humor" was
plagiarized directly from an editorial in The News Leader, but, as the
editor of that paper says, "with a butcher's hand."

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It is not enough to plead the tendencies of the times as an excuse
for commonness. The publication of smutty and, in some instances,
utterly revolting jokes and questionable stories cannot be justified as
necessary in order to make a student publication sell. This is a form
of intellectual prostitution.

Universities are under an enduring obligation to establish and
maintain standards that are calculated to lift the intellectual and
spiritual level of the societies of which they are a part. To pander to
that which is unworthy for the sake of profit or cheap popularity, as
does the last issue of Spectator, is to betray the great tradition of
which our universities and colleges are at once the inheritors and the
protectors.

The editors of Spectator do not act for themselves alone. They act
for an old and honorable society which bears the name of the founder of
this University, and they act for the University, the founding of which
was the crowning achievement of his long and useful life. If students
wish, acting only for themselves and over their own names, to compete in
the open market place with the salacious and offensive publications
found there, they may do so and take their chances with others engaged
in such activities, even though I would deeply regret such action. But
they should not be permitted to associate with themselves, in order to
lend respectability to such ventures, the name of this University.

As I told you when you were good enough to meet with me earlier this
week, I shall discuss this matter with the Board at its April meeting
and I shall then talk with you further.